Dictionaries of Papua New Guinea, 13; Oksapmin Dictionary; Oksapmin Field Notes

206 Oksapmin Field Notes

2 Introduction

Oksapmin is the name given to the 8,000 people li\ing just west of the Strickland
river and south of the Ok Om river in the Sandaun Pro\dnce of Papua New Guinea.
It is also the name given to the language they speak. The name was given by the
Telefomin people to the west and it means "The bush people of the water." The
name is misleading as it suggest that the Oksapmin language is parr of the Ok
family of languages, which it is not. It is considered a language isolate.

Bimin, an Ok family language, is spoken by the people just to the south of the
Oksapmin language area. There is a lot of intermarriage between the Bimin people
and the Oksapmins who live in the closer villages to the north. Although most
Bimins are bilingual with Oksapmin, usually only the Oksapmin women who are
married to Bimin men and live there are bilingual with Bimin.

In the Oksapmin villages nearest Bimin villages, the number of shared words with
Bimin is about 17%. In the villages furthest away, the number of shared words is
about 13%. It is not easy to determine which words are truly cognates or are due to
borrowing.

Oksapmin has two main dialects (see map on page 207). Dialect 1 has only minor
changes throughout the dialect. It is spoken by about half of the language group.
Dialect 2 is a dialect chain, with differences becoming greater with greater
distance between two villages.

Lawrence, Marshall, compiler 1993. Oksapmin dictionary. Dictionaries of Papua New
Guinea, 13. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 244 p.